On my current reading list is Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, a new novel set in the People’s Republic of North Korea. With its grim descriptions of North Korean citizens eating moths and even the floral tributes from the government cemetery in their desperation to stay alive, the book paints an unappetizing picture of life in the totalitarian state whose succession drama recently gripped the world. I’m extra fascinated by such culinary passages, having dined (covertly) in Europe’s only North Korean restaurant last week. Situated in the outlying Amsterdam suburb of Oosdorp, the newly opened Pyongyang offers an altogether perkier—not to mention more plentiful—vision of the country’s cuisine.

Here, an army of charming hostesses in day-glo wedding-style dresses presides eagerly over a windowless room decorated with paintings of pastoral superabundance (tulip fields in bloom, corn harvest at sunrise). They pause between courses to belt out folk songs about friendship and reunification—even a delightful version of that well-known North Korean favorite "My Heart Will Go On." The food—a nine-plate roster of Korean standards like barbecued beef, kimchi, and chicken-gizzard broth—is uniformly good, but there are clearly ethical and moral issues attached to handing over the requisite 79 euros to a restaurant so clearly built to glorify a totalitarian regime. While we chew that one over, check out the evening's musical entertainment. Then tell us, would you eat here?